Every Year some half a million pilgrims make their way to the small Norfolk village of Little Walsingham to worship at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. It was in 1061 the Lady of the Manor of Walsingham, Lady Richeldis de Faverches, had a vision of the Holy Virgin in which she was instructed to build a replica of the Holy House in Nazareth , the house in which the Archangel Gabriel had told Mary that she would be the mother of Christ. The original house was just 13ft by 23ft and made of wood, later to be enclosed in stone.

An Augustinian Priory was established in 1153 to protect the shrine and to provide accommodation for the pilgrims. The Priory which is now in ruins remained a place of pilgrimage until its destruction in 1538 during the reformation.

Pilgrimages to Walsingham was revived in 1922 when the vicar of Walsingham Fr Alfred Hope Patten restored the devotion by placing an image of our Lady in the parish church. In 1931 the image was translated to the newly built Holy House around which the present day Shrine Church was constructed.

St John's Annual Pilgrimage.

This years parish pilgrimage is from the 24 th to 26 th September. The cost: Adults £103.30 (plus a share in the driver's car costs), Children £61.98 (Under 5 Free). The deposit on booking is £20.

20 spaces have again been reserved. Please see Ray Hotson for more information or to book your place(s). Ray is happy to collect payments instalments as in previous years, if you value this option.

This annual pilgrimage is a great blessing to all who make the journey to pray in that holy place. Have a word with folk who have been before if you are unsure about whether you might value the experience. (Almost everyone does…)
These reflections on the 2009 pilgrimage are by Claire Jenkins:-

Walsingham: it was lovely how everyone was celebrating and singing.

This is how two young girls I happened to meet spontaneously described their experience of being on pilgrimage at Walsingham. I met them whilst I was interviewing Brenda on a seat in a quiet corner of the gardens at The Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk .

Brenda was one of the pilgrims at the shrine from St John's Church in Carrington, at the end of September 2009. Some members of our church had nearly sixty years experience of coming to Walsingham on pilgrimage. Anne who is well into her nineties, told me that she first came to Walsingham in 1953. Pilgrims have made the journey to Walsingham from all over Britain - and the world - since the 11th century, not long after the Lady Richeldis had her vision of Our Lady in 1061. So Walsingham has been a place of pilgrimage for nearly a thousand years. Pat, another member of our group had told me that it is so different from normal life. So I was mystified and intrigued to find out why people have been attracted to the shrine and why our people from St John's were here and what it means to them. I set about interviewing members of the pilgrimage party and others who would help me discover an answer to this puzzle. I felt spurred on in this task of discovery by a childlike sense, that God too was celebrating and singing this weekend. It was special a warm sunny weekend in late summer 2009 a year which had been cold, wet and on the whole miserable.

I started with Jonathan our parish priest who told me that he rather liked the changes that Bishop Lindsay, (the new administrator), has made,

I hate the expression , more user friendly, I don't like anything that is dumbed down, and I don't think he has done that, he has made it easier for people who are perhaps less sure of this Catholic tradition to enter in fully the experience of the pilgrimage.

This more personal and friendly experience is referred to by Pat, who is new to Walsingham, she admits to me that sometimes she struggles to explain her deeper feelings.

I think I am doing things while I am here in the service, whereas back in church I am more an observer. I think I am taking part more because you do take part here. Well yesterday , I went and had the laying on of hands and I had the oil which is a very personal thing.

Pat is talking about the laying on of hands, a ministry of healing and prayer which takes place in silence. This ministry can be for oneself or for someone else in need. The anointing with oil is for those who are sick. You are anointed by oil on the forehead and the palms of your hands. These ministries are followed by a blessing.

Many spoke of the sense of being together, in community with other Christians. Brenda, explains this attraction for her by telling me that,

when we are on or own we sometimes feel that everything is dull and not going very well, but when you get together with other Christians in a place like this you realise how God is at work and how active God is and it is so encouraging to be with other people singing and worshiping together in this way and praising God

Two young people who I met had instinctively told me that ‘it was quite magical really'. When I related this to Bishop Lindsay later he explained their spontaneous outburst to me by drawing my attention to the candle lit night-time procession of Our Lady in the shrine gardens.

I don't think they mean it was magic, in any sort of negative sense. I think they meant mysterious and out of the ordinary, I am sure that's what they meant. There is something about that procession, it's a funny old thing we go around the garden, carrying our candles and all sorts and conditions, that's another powerful thing. If you think about the people who are here this weekend you have got children, got a few teenagers, we have got middle age people, we have got elderly people , it is a very wide age group and we are all doing the same thing, and that is a lovely thing in a culture that is very divided. You know we have stuff for young people, we have stuff for old people , here we are all doing the same thing.

We do not travel alone; baptism unites us not only with Jesus but with all who are his. Jesus and they are our friends on the journey. We are all together not only the fit and well but also the frail and the very young.

This sense of being together as brothers and sisters in Christ is important for Jonathan our priest; he describes how we are here not only for ourselves but for all Christians.

I think it is more important to focus on the fact that we have journeyed together, and not only those of us who have come on pilgrimage, but on behalf of others , so I think the whole church has come on pilgrimage here even though that there are only fourteen of us.

He also relates it to the journey that St John's community Church has made over the past 18 months. We have held our services in the church hall whilst the church was being refashioned as a church and community facility.

We have made a pilgrimage as a church community in the last year or so, as we redeveloped the building. So in a sense this is a sacrament of it and a parallel to the journey that we have done in our own place.

So for Jonathan there is a strong sense that our pilgrimage is asking God to make our new development sacred and holy for all his people in Carrington.

I am reminded by Anne, who has been coming since 1953, of this sense of community in praise of the Holy God when she told me that in her day pilgrims walked bare footed from theAnglican shrine in Walsingham to the Roman Catholic Shrine a mile away. She recalls in her own words, ‘we walked from the village to the shrine at the top and we sang hymns all the way.'

So I am told of this strong sense of a sacred community on pilgrimage seeking after the Lord. But many also spoke of an inner deeper spiritual need. Pat told me that she was ‘also looking for a way, a life, and a sign that comes from here …'

Bishop Lindsay enthusiastically explains how he sees the effect of pilgrimage on people as bringing people fiercely and passionately alive to Jesus.

When a person makes a pilgrimage some thing about the journey opens them up to the Lord and it is a very wonderful thing to see that happen in people. I believe in the things that Walsingham has to offer, which is also what the Church does. Some how here it is putting what the church does normally under a magnifying glass and you know if you hold a magnifying glass to something, particularly in the sun, it bursts into flames and I think that's what tends to happen here.

Anne in her nineties, experiences it differently and in her own words she tells me that she gets,

Such a lot of help from it, it's so peaceful and you are surrounded by prayer, I will always come and I will always as long as I am here.

When I spoke to the bishop I had a sense of what Anne was describing. He tells me that;

The whole of the space here including the gardens is consecrated to the Lord, and I think that means that the ground is soft, for people to experience the Lord, because I think, in ordinary life in our culture, the ground is a bit like tarmac; where as I think it is softened here. I think it is a thin place but, that's not magic, and I think I am realising that one of the things that keeps the place thin is the faithful prayers of those who come here and those who live here.

So Walsingham is, like a little protest to a ‘world' that sidelines God's Story, as in other places devoted to Christ. Here in Walsingham, over the hedge, week by week, on Saturday mornings pilgrims keep singing and retracing the footsteps of Christ through the garden to the three crosses on the mound, to the arms of Mary, to the empty tomb, hoping to discover fullness of life with Him. I have used the bishop's words written elsewhere, but he best seems to describe to me the wonder of the Walsingham experience and the answer to my puzzle. But after all, this is what the pilgrims are telling me. What we have all expressed is best put in the words of St Luke, who draws us to where the miracle all began,

And the shepherds went back glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen.

You are invited to experience Walsingham for yourself.